Although the dust jacket for Reckless Eyeballing says the novel is "men vs. women, blacks vs. Jews, North vs.

South, and Ishmael Reed vs. everybody," certainly some of the alliances are more positive than they sound. The novel's central character, for example, playwright Ian Ball, has an excellent working relationship with his Jewish director, and while the battle lines between men and women are clearly drawn, there is an attempt at fusion by the book's end.

Reed's primary focus in Reckless Eyeballing is on the black women writers who routinely display black men in ways that mirror society's general misconception of them. Reed came under heavy criticism for this novel, as many critics saw the book as a thinly veiled attack on Alice Walker and The Color Purple (1982). The similarities between Walker and her novel and Reed's fictional character and her play are striking...